new s.i. -- gary smith on agassi

The Agassi story was terrific. I was exhausted all day but stayed up past my intended bedtime to read it, and all of a sudden I wasn't sleepy any more. There's just so much fantastic reporting. I mean, who would think it was important to get the ingredients Agassi uses when he's cooking steaks? Yet it adds to our understanding of Agassi. And all of the details about growing up with his father, and his pursuit of Steffi ... amazing. (Did anyone else notice that Steffi took the picture? I thought that was interesting.) The writing was excellent, as usual.

Was it one of Smith's five best stories? I don't know. There's probably about 15 or 20 -- at least -- that deserve to be in that argument. But it was damn good. (I haven't read them all yet, but this looks like a great issue for writers, with Smith, Price and Hoffer all contributing stories.)

 

Awesome, awesome story. He did all that with just 26 letters to work with.

 

My beef is with all the descriptive depth he uses for situations that neither he nor anyone else could know the truth of. The Tillman still really rankles me. For all I know, that may be the only one that does... but did it piss me off something profound.

I'll have to read the Agassi.

 

I found it very interesting that there was only one piece of art for the entire story - the close-up of Agassi, which was used as a design element on the rest of the pages. It still looked very, very sharp. SI's design is the anti-ESPN: The Magazine. Very classy, nice blend of modern and traditional. They were able to take a very long piece with virtually no art and not have it look intimidating. So kudos to SI on that.

I guess as far as the story goes, maybe this is sacrilege, but I could have done without Agassi and Smith on an airplane discussing what kind of story it was going to be. Very Michael Silver-ish.

That's really just about my only complaint, though. Perfect timing to get a definitive Agassi portrait into print. I'm surprised no one thought to do so before. Also I notice that Smith is starting to take on some celebrity subjects lately after a run of more obscure people (Mexican cross country team, "The Deadly Dive," etc.). I did like the Kellerman piece a little better.

I'd love to see Smith take on a full-length Agassi biography, but the writer doesn't seem to be interested in book writing for some reason. And I don't know that his style would work in book form. Even for the length he writes, his stories are pretty concise - every sentence seems to be instilled with a serious sense of urgency that it's pulling us toward the end. He's the journalism equivalent of a short-story writer. Alice Munro hasn't written any novels, and I don't expect her to, for example.

One more interesting note - quotes used in this story, a Smith rarity. A lot of italicized Andre, along with a few quotes at the top from fellow pros, a broadcaster, etc.

Young feature writers, as always, shouldn't try to copy Smith's style. But you can learn a lot from his pieces - depth of reporting, confidence in your own writing (not just copping out with six-inch quotes), organization. Smith writes beautiful sentences, the sports writing equivalent of Philip Roth or John Updike. But his pieces are also impeccably organized.

 

Man, I just read it. Superlative work.
It starts off a bit off-putting, with the device of "You do this" and "You see that" more like "I did this" and "I did that", that way of showing all the great access and "Here I am, eating steak with Andre Agassi!!" And I agree about the bit in the plane.

But then it builds, going back and forth from past to present, making it all make sense. He doesn't quite grasp the transformation, but he can't, because Agassi probably can't either and no one can ever truly express in words something that's that far deep inside.

The quotes from the broadcasters and Courier early on the piece are shallow in comparison. I'm sure they said more interesting things, particularly Carillo and Courier, who are head and shoulders above most in the tennis business in terms of depth and insight.

I knew a lot about Agassi, but there was so much in there I couldn't have imagined. So many people take the easy way out in characterizing Mike Agassi as one of those obsessive tennis fathers. This gives some insight as to how that comes to be.

I'll say this, though. My mother had him figured out early. Even with the hair and all the hype, all the stuff moms hate, she said to me, "That kid will grow up. I can see it in his eyes, in the way he expresses himself. He's something special." When you sit in a press conference with him, the first thing you notice is that whatever your question is (and people ask REALLY stupid questions in those things sometimes), he'll stop, think about it, and look the questioner straight in the eye and answer the question like it's something really insightful. All you will concur in agreeing how rare that is with professional athletes.

I wish someone would do something similar about Graf. She's equally as interesting, yet we know literally almost nothing about her.

 

Couple more things:

As far as the quotes he used, I have a feeling Smith was going for short and pithy, something more feature writers should do. Long quotes simply cause readers to zone out in a narrative piece (unless used properly, like the italicized Agassi quotes). He used those quotes to quickly lay down some themes - to lend early credibility to the thesis of the piece, which was Agassi's transformation.

Also - as far as the second-person "you," I'd just as soon see a writer go first-person with it. I don't think it's so intrusive anymore in this kind of piece. I'm thinking about a recent New Yorker piece on brain surgery. The writer uses "I'm sitting with the family," "I revisit the family in March," etc., etc. Sometimes it seems like we try so hard to take ourselves out of the way that it ends up being intrusive because it's so awkward to try to set the scene without just flat-out coming out and saying, "I visited Andre and Steffi."

 

I sit here in awe of Mr. Smith and his work. Brilliant.

 

I can understand why some folks didn't like the airplane scene, but I didn't have any real problem with it. If anything, it shows again how introspective and careful Agassi has become. (It also further supports Ballscribe's comment about how Agassi will really think about questions during press conferences.)

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Also ...

Christine Kenneally's "The Deepest Cut" is very good and worth a read, if only because it takes a very complex and serious matter, boils it down and makes it much easier to understand.

 

And this is why, for all the heat it gets in the industry, this site can be such a wonderful place. You can make parallels between long pieces in recent issues of SI and the New Yorker, and someone on here will understand exactly what you mean.

 

Was that the one in Men's Journal? It was damned impressive. He did a good job of exposing the coverup done by the Russians of the real number of dead and how some of the terrorists escaped.

 

Not to sound all hairy-canary, but the Beslan story was written by C.J. Chivers for Esquire.